Wednesday, June 5, 2013

The 110 miles/hr lap speed goal did not quite fall at the 2013 TT ZERO, and in its place we had a tense close race between MotoCzysz and Mugen Shinden. In a surprise finish, MotoCzysz' Mike Rutter came in 1st with an unofficial 109.675 miles/hr lap speed, beating Mugen's John McGuiness by 1.67 seconds, and a 109.527 miles/hr lap speed. MotoCzysz' other entry, Mark Miller, retired halfway through the race allowing Rob Barber, riding for the Ohio State University Buckeye team, to come in 3rd with a 90.403 miles/hr lap speed.

Before the race Rutter sounded resigned to coming in 2nd to John McGuiness, and he even said so during a Manx Radio interview right after crossing the finish line. He was surprised and ecstatic at having won against the odds that McGuiness and Mugen's money would win the race. Apparently a rumor was running around the TT ZERO pits that Mugen had spend $4.3 million on developing the 2013 bike, and aiming to win. For his part, John McGuiness, in the post race interview with Manx Radio, was "grumpy" and didn't know what to say, that he was "sore" and felt like he deserved to win. What he did say is that after the Bungalow timing point, Mike Rutter just disappeared into the distance.

The 1.67 second difference could boil down to having missed a corner or two, and the finish was one of the closest ever in the TT.

Early in the race (the Glen Helen timing point) McGuiness was ahead of Rutter by 9 seconds, and arrived at that timing point neck-and-neck with Miller. The way this works, it is a time trial race with riders leaving individually. McGuiness left 3rd meaning that to be neck-and-neck with Miller he had gained about 10 seconds. Rutter had a 109 miles/hr speed at that point, McGuiness had 112 miles/hr speed, Miller a 108 miles/hr speed, and George Spence a 90.766 miles/hr speed.

By the Ramsey Hairpin, McGuiness had a 5 seconds lead over Rutter, and by the Bungalow McGuiness increased the lead to 8.9 seconds.

Mark Miller retired from the race at Ballaugh Bridge.

Finishing data - unofficial, and reported by Manx Radio over the air .. will update this when official results are posted. Mistakes in transcribing could have been made.

#1 Mike Rutter - MotoCzysz - 20:38.461 .. 109.675 miles/hr. Fantastic feeling, especially glad to win it for Michael Czysz who is back at home. He never thought he'd win the race, and the bike went perfectly.